Labour Hire: What It Is And Why You Need It
When your business needs workers you have two options, hire new employees or use labour hire. This concept isn’t new but a lot of businesses have gotten out of the habit. Instead, there is a trend towards hiring new employees and then laying them off when business gets too slow. Let’s take a look at what exactly labour hire is and how it can benefit your business.
Labour hire is a practice that is used around the world but goes by many names. In Australia,this is a commonly used term. The term refers to people who work on a temporary basis. While there is a focus on people who perform routine tasks such as field work and secretarial work, there is no limit to what labour hire can be used for.
Nurses and doctors sometimes are hired on a labour hire (or temporary) basis.
Temporary workers are typically not offered the same level of benefits as employees and have a different option for sick days. The most important benefit for most companies is that labour hire “employees” are far more affordable. As we mentioned they do not have the same level of company provided benefits such as retirement and insurance. In most cases this is provided by the labour hire company that you work through.
Hiring employees as opposed to temporary employees gets expensive quickly in other areas too. You have to provide training and other resources to him. Temp agencies will send labour hire workers that have training in the area that you need. This helps to reduce the amount of onboarding work that your business needs to do.
They can work both full-time schedules and part-time schedules. One of the benefits of looking for labour hire is that the workers are so flexible. You tell a labour company or group what you are looking for and they staff it. While a temporary worker may sound like someone who only works on a short-term basis, you can also have a labourhire worker who works for a long-term basis to cover for periods such as a long maternity leave.
There are a lot of administrative benefits to using labour hire too. You don’t have to spend hours working on the payroll processing for your temporary employees, instead you pay the labour hire company and they distribute the money to their employees. Your HR team can spend time working on payroll for your own team so that you can ensure accuracy and timeliness.
Labour hire companies fully vet their employees, that means you don’t have to perform interviews, background checks, or even advertise for the job post. Saving both time and money for your business is incredibly important.
Another benefit that you will find with labour hire is the ability to hire expertise in an area that you don’t normally have. For example, if you have a medical specialty your hospital needs access to or a coding language your team doesn’t know, you can hire a temporary worker to get the job done. Your need doesn’t even need to be that high tech, you can even find temp workers who know how to use a specific tool or piece of equipment.
Laying off employees is also never an easy process. If you hire employees just for an uptake of business and then find yourself needing to let them go, it is a long process. Notifying those employees and then getting all of their work accessories back takes time. And chances are that you won’t particular feel good laying people off, it’s a hard decision.
The last benefit you get is a long history of labour hire companies providing the services that companies need. Their services are effective and this has been proven over and over again. Even most unions do not have problems with using labour hire to get extra assistance for your business.
A lot of businesses need people for the busy seasons to work in a variety of roles. There are also times when business picks up to the point at which your business simply can’t keep up with work. Hiring employees just for this period is simply not reasonable in most cases. Instead of spending time and money hiring employees use labour hire workers.